


Ache of Love

by mresundance



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Gunplay, Knifeplay, M/M, Marking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-27
Updated: 2010-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ache of Love

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/4777.html?thread=14140585#t14140585) at the Sherlock BBC Kinkmeme.
> 
>  _Pass me that lovely little gun,_  
>  My dear, my darling one  
> The cleaners are coming one by one  
> You don’t even want to let them start
> 
> John has to go away for a while, for his own safety. They don’t know for how long, and where he’ll end up. So John decides to make his and Sherlock’s last night together one to remember.

‘Do you want to play a game?’ John asks.

Sherlock, sprawled in a dusty, tattered armchair, cracks his eyes at John. Wind and rain slaps the windows; John can hear the crazy, groaning pier-stakes outside and the ocean grumbling and gnawing the rocky shore. That afternoon, before the storm had descended, they’d gone into the village, to a few of the small, cozy antique shops before John became bored. Instead they’d wrapped themselves in their room, with the peeling wallpaper and creaking floors, waiting for Mycroft’s man to come and take John away.

Now they wait, John sitting in the bed, Sherlock in the armchair. The bed linens smell like moth balls and time. The clock on the mantel shaves off minutes.

John had found a gun, in a cupboard, when they arrived early in the morning. A Smith and Wesson Victory revolver, perhaps from the second World War, neatly tucked in a box with all six of its bullets. It had been cleaned lately and everything still moved like a knife through warm butter. For some reason he’d decided not to tell Sherlock about it immediately.

Now he says: ‘Do you want to play a game?’ and Sherlock looks at him.

‘What kind?’

John pulls out the heavy revolver. He spins the cylinder and Sherlock’s breath catches. John smiles.

‘Oh John,’ Sherlock says, eyes dark. It almost sounds like a come-on. John straddles Sherlock’s lap and traces the barrel over Sherlock’s chin, down his throat.

‘I want you to put it in your mouth and suck on it. Like you do me,’ John growls in Sherlock’s ear.

Sherlock takes the revolver delicately, tenderly, lips folding over the head of the barrel and hollowing as he sucks. He pulls back and flicks at the sight and the underside of the barrel, before swallowing it again. John feels himself harden, remembers the feel of Sherlock’s mouth around him countless times. The revolver is slick with Sherlock’s saliva as John pulls it from him. Sherlock makes a disappointed noise as it leaves his mouth and John puts it aside. They kiss and Sherlock tastes sharp and metallic.

‘There were no bullets,’ he says finally.

John laughs into Sherlock’s lips.

‘Of course not. I’m not insane. I’d never put you in danger like that.’

Sherlock makes another noise, a different one.

‘I would’ve liked a bullet or two,’ Sherlock says as they press into each other again.

‘Of course you would,’ John says between kisses. Sherlock smiles a crooked smile.

The kissing turns rough and ragged, John grabbing fistfuls of Sherlock’s hair and biting his lower lip. He feels a hard, sharp nudge along his ribs. Sherlock’s knife blade flashes in the dull, gray light and it’s John’s turn to hold his breath as Sherlock traces his jaw with it.

‘Why don’t you carve yourself into me instead?’ Sherlock says, wrapping his long arms and legs around John, constrictor like. ‘And I’ll carve myself into you and we’ll have that, at least.’

John takes the knife and half hauls, half leads Sherlock into the bed.

‘Where do you want it?’ he asks, running the knife down Sherlock’s still clothed body.

‘Where-ever you do.’

John cuts them out of their clothes and it’s a mash of bodies and moans and sweat for awhile, the smell of sex filling the small, musty room. Then blood. John’s incisions are neat, surgical and they will scar, but there’s no antiseptic except an old bottle of whisky from the same cupboard as the revolver. John daubs at Sherlock’s bloodied thigh. Sherlock practically purrs. Like the first time he invited John on a case.

‘You’re a doctor,’ Sherlock’s voice had throbbed. ‘In fact, you’re an army doctor.’ And then propositioned John with the promise of injuries, violent deaths, and another few lifetime’s worth of trouble. God, yes, John thinks again, nipping the inside of Sherlock’s thigh just under the fresh cuts. He would do it all over again, a hundred thousand times. He would live the exact life he had lived over and over again, if he knew it would bring him Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock sighs and grazes his fingers over the matching marks he’d cut into John’s thigh. He starts chuckling.

‘What?’ John says, spooning against him.

‘It’s like – children who cut their initials into trees. In hearts. Young love,’ he says half mockingly, half sing-song.

‘But a heart would’ve been too hard to carve into flesh.’

‘You didn’t try hard enough.’ Sherlock pouts.

‘Really? Little hearts are your style then?’ John smiles.

‘If they’re bloody, carved into my thigh with your initials type of hearts.’

‘ _SH_ and _JW_ are just fine.’ John sighs into Sherlock’s still sweaty curls.

‘Yes. They’ll have to be.’ Sherlock’s voice is so incredibly sad, it fills the whole room.

In the morning, Mycroft’s man comes and they say goodbye. It takes longer than Mycroft’s man likes but John doesn’t care. He folds Sherlock into his arms over and over, whispering that he’ll come back. Sherlock doesn’t say anything. Just looks lost and broken. John can feel his fineboned shoulders trembling as he breaks their embrace and looks at Sherlock, for maybe the last time. Neither of them knows.


End file.
